


Like the Back of My Hand

by sunshinexprincess



Category: The Originals (TV)
Genre: F/M, Falling In Love, Family, Klaus Mikaelson Has A Heart, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:00:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24835765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunshinexprincess/pseuds/sunshinexprincess
Summary: Hayley had never been much of a believer, but the shiver she got when watching him sway their daughter to the rhythm of Silent Night in the warm gold of the sanctuary and listening to him sing the words in gorgeous, rich German made her figure that if God existed, she probably owed him a thank you for this.
Relationships: Hayley Marshall & Klaus Mikaelson, Hayley Marshall/Klaus Mikaelson
Comments: 4
Kudos: 100





	Like the Back of My Hand

**Author's Note:**

> Late to the party? Yeah, probably. But I'm here, I'm inspired, and I'm f*ckin proud of this piece. Enjoy!

_“Perhaps we have more in common than we thought.”_

Ten months later, the words had never rung more true.

They had settled down in Colorado, a place so unlike Klaus Mikaelson that no one would ever think to look for them there. A three bedroom house, with a back porch and a fireplace and enough land for a garden-full of marigolds and geraniums, and with easily enough of their money left to make the small place seem almost as grand as their home in the Quarter.

They did their best to be normal; Hayley was a barista at a local coffee shop, he was a professor of Ancient History and Art History at the nearby university. She often felt that it gave him a meaning immortality never had; a briefcase, an exquisite suit, a means of sharing his passionate love for history and art. Initially, she had lulled herself into the dream of family when she sipped red wine and watched Hope play as he cooked in a loose shirt and jeans, engrossed in spices and mincing and the perfect al dente of pasta.

It was three months in that she realized that it was no longer a dream, and that somehow, small family dinners and planting herbs in their window boxes and dancing together to jazz in the living room after Hope went to sleep had become their reality.

_________________

He had never expected himself to be so fulfilled by such a simple life.

Maybe that was his true weakness; the fear of complete and utter normalcy, when he was a creature so obviously destined to be great.

But grading papers and lecturing smoothly from his memory to his students and then singing Italian folk songs to his daughter as he cooked dinner for the three of them wasn’t so terrible as he had thought it would all be- much to Freya, Rebekah, and especially Kol and Elijah’s surprise- and he found himself oddly at peace with simplicity.

He had absolutely despised the idea of Colorado. Devoid of a decent party scene and easy populations to drink from, and lacking desperately in culture, he had abhorred even the mention of the place when Hayley decided on it. Now it felt so much like home it shocked him to his core.

The only thing more disturbing was how much Hayley felt like home.

He wasn’t so naive as to think that they could be truly happy here, without the people that they loved. Weekly phone calls weren’t nearly enough, when his heart ached for his family as he knew Hayley’s ached for them, too. But peace and happiness, he had learned quickly in his thousand years of life, were not remotely close in definition. And so no, Colorado did not whisper happiness into his ears as he strolled on the campus walk with a cup of black coffee Hayley had cheekily brewed him from the corner cafe. But it did sing of peace.

And peace wasn’t something he had felt in a very, very long time.

________________

She wasn’t sure when she had begun to fall in love with him.

She wasn’t even sure if it _was_ love. He felt like her best friend and her brother and a distant lover all in one, an essence she craved as much as she tried desperately to loathe it. They had fallen in an easy rhythm reminiscent of the way they fought, side by side with _come-and-get-me_ grins and drenched in blood like it had rained from the sky. He read her Hamlet as if he had been there, and, in all honesty, she wouldn’t be surprised if he revealed that he had either helped write the play or had acted in it in the five hundred years since it was first performed. She taught him how to mix herbal remedies and showed him how to properly plant the flowers for their garden so that they would bloom well, satisfied in the knowledge that she had something to teach him, and soft in the knowledge that he listened.

In March, they had picked the names Nicolas and Claire over their first glass of wine, and selected the last name Lockwood on their third bourbon, her falling over with laughter into his chest as he evilly toasted to the boy, who was, as far as he knew, thousands of miles away in Mystic Falls. She had fallen asleep on his lap, waking to a dying fire and his fingers in her hair.

On the Fourth of July- “ _do you really expect me to spend my entire day eating fried food and drinking cheap beer-“_ they had gone to the town celebration by the lake _"like every other normal family, Klaus.”_ She had met some of his students staying in town over the summer, many of whom she recognized as regulars of the coffee shop, and many of whom had barely hidden their disappointment at finding out that Professor Nicolas had a wife.

She had told him the ring was a little much; he had insisted with a grin as he slipped it onto her finger on their living room couch the night they had closed the sale. She realized she had looked into his eyes too long when he learned in to softly kiss her cheek.

On Halloween Hayley wanted Hope to be a fairy, while Klaus insisted she be a wolf. They took her to the costume store and burst out laughing when she reached for fake vampire fangs, and had ended up playing rock paper scissors like children in the aisle. Later Klaus had admitted, as she toddled around the neighborhood in front of them with a plastic pumpkin half her size, that she made a _“beautiful little fairy.”_ He had slipped his hand into hers as they strolled the streets, wrapped in wool coats with cups of hot chocolate, past the picket fence houses and brightly dressed children.

She hadn’t wanted to be the first to let go.

On Thanksgiving they had dressed up in the evening dinner clothes they hadn’t worn in what felt like decades, and made the short trip to a neighbor’s home where the young families of the street were gathering for what Estelle with the coffee-dark skin and glorious homemade casseroles called Friendsgiving; Hayley had stifled a giggle at his reaction to the word when the invitation arrived, and then smiled softly over her glass of wine as he laughed with the neighborhood men the way he used to with his brothers. Hope was dressed in green velvet. Neither of them spoke on the knowledge that it reminded them both of Rebekah.

She had stumbled home drunk on his shoulder with Hope in his other arm, her heels looped over her finger despite the November snow on the sidewalk. He had tucked in their daughter and then slipped Hayley out of her clothes and into one of her t-shirts, smirking all the while as she rambled in drunken circles about neighborhood drama and what the other women had worn to dinner and how she was glad that the Mikaelsons had at least taught her good taste in clothes. He was kissing her forehead goodnight when she caught his arm: _“I can’t remember the last time I had a real Thanksgiving. Thank you.”_

As he closed the door and returned downstairs, it hit him that sometime in the span between March and now, their house had started to feel like home.

He spent the night decorating for Christmas and researching the best places to get a tree.

The tree was hung with red and gold baubles from the shop on Market Street and wrapped delicately with popcorn strands- Klaus had insisted. It was something his family had learned and taken up as their own tradition whenever they could, and so they had sat, on December First, on the floor under their new tree with popcorn and thread and old Chicago jazz on record. They had fallen asleep on the couch with _How the Grinch Stole Christmas_ on the TV and Hope between them. When she woke their daughter was tucked under her arm and her head was in his lap.

The word family suddenly made a lot more sense.

On Christmas Eve they had walked the block to the town church and sang hymns under candlelight and snowflakes on stained glass. Hayley had never been much of a believer, but the shiver she got when watching him sway their daughter to the rhythm of Silent Night in the warm gold of the sanctuary and listening to him sing the words in gorgeous, rich German made her figure that if God existed, she probably owed him a thank you for this.

Hope opened her toys and gifts on Christmas morning as Hayley sipped coffee and Klaus crept around the corners with a film camera. Rebekah sent designer clothes exactly in Hope’s size, Elijah sent exquisite copies of his favorite books for them to read to her, Kol and Freya sent a bouquet of twenty-four different flowers with known healing powers that, in the cheeky note written in the younger brother’s handwriting, _“will never die, so long as you bloody water them instead of let them wither like everything else.”_ Marcel had surprised them both by sending a necklace with a protective charm in the shape of an Easter lily- Davina’s favorite- with the spell courtesy of the witch herself, who had written the accompanying note in a beautiful cursive worthy of Shakespeare himself.

_I miss you Hayley, for what it’s worth, and we both wish Hope all the happiness and peace the world can offer her. Marcel is too proud to write- he got that from Klaus. Still, I know that he loves the three of you, somewhere in his heart, and as much as he and Klaus have done to each other in their lifetimes, that in itself is a Christmas miracle. Stay safe, stay hidden. I hope Rebekah sends this on time so it really feels like Christmas, wherever you are._

Later that night they were back at Estelle and Treyvon’s, clinking crystal flutes of champagne and sending their children on a candy cane hunt around the house. She leaned on his arm again as they leisurely made their way home, smiling at the snowfall and tossing handfuls of it in his face. He gave her a pair of diamond earrings and a leather journal he had crafted himself. She made him close his eyes as she led him to the porch, where she put her hands over her mouth to hide her excited smile as he turned slowly in the space, looking at all the new canvases, paints, and stacks of sketch paper and brushes. After they put Hope to bed they drank the rest of that day’s bourbon and danced slowly to Louis Armstrong’s Christmas album in the light if the Christmas tree.

When she woke the next morning she was still in her dress, one of his arms draped loosely around her waist, the sun glimmering through the curtains of his bedroom, reflecting off of the bright new snow. She wondered when she started believing that he was safe, that falling asleep while watching cartoons and swaying to jazz was something to trust him with.

She decided, as she slowly drank the coffee he had brewed with breakfast, it was that night in June when she had listened to him sing in French as he sautéed their dinner and poured her a generous helping of wine with a smile worthy of God’s angels.

Last night, on New Year’s, they had once again gone to what Hayley had drunkenly dubbed the neighborhood party house. She had been draped in a new silver dress, he in a perfectly pressed suit, and Hope wearing purple, her red hair set against the dress in delicate ringlets. Hope giggled as she and the neighborhood children raced around the house restlessly, pausing to smile at her parents, Klaus with his arm around Hayley’s waist and her mother’s head on his shoulder, flashing them both a joyful grin before disappearing up the stairs.

He had kissed her softly at midnight when the confetti rained gold from those cheap poppers from the dollar store, one hand at her back and the other in her hair, gentle enough to let her push him away without notice from the neighbors, a restraint and respect she had never known Klaus Mikaelson to be capable of.

She could have blamed it on the five glasses of champagne, or on the excuse that their fabricated love story would never be believed if they _didn’t_ kiss when the ball dropped on the flatscreen. But to do so would be an insult- to him, to herself, to their daughter, to the lifetime she had spent running from her feelings, and to the new life they were building here.

And so she kissed him back, and he tasted of champagne and of the faintest whisper of blood and of forevers wrapped in silver paper and tied with a red bow. And just like all of Hope’s fairytales, time stopped.

When she pulled away the first thing she saw was ocean blue.

They walked home in an easy silence, Hope asleep in Hayley’s arms and wrapped in her coat, and when they lay her to sleep this time they didn’t waste their night on bourbon, or dancing, or talking until they drifted off into dreams. Instead she captured his lips with a practiced sensuality, breathed a grateful sigh into the way he smirked against her skin and threw her against the wall. He took her on the couch with her fangs in his neck, on the kitchen counter next to the empty bottle of wine, in the heat of his shower and he laughed darkly into her moans, in the white of his bed that he soaked quickly in her blood, their sweat, and the delicious end of their high; and in the hapless blur of long-suppressed passion, the one thing she vividly remembered was whispering “ _I love you”_ into his mouth.

When she woke to the smell of pancakes and coffee, wrapped in the last clean silk bedsheet and listening to the deep French on his tone, rolling in waves up the staircase to meet her skin like a morning kiss, she decided that ocean blue was her favorite color.


End file.
